The Denman Theatre
15-17 June 2012

OUR MISSION: TO EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF 9/11 TRUTH

“La raison avant la passion” (Reason over Passion) – Pierre Elliot Trudeau

You know all there is to know about Building 7, but do you seriously believe that a Boeing 757 hit anywhere near the Pentagon?

You know a lot about the Twin Towers, but did you know that there were explosions in their subbasements before the planes hit? 

If you think that would have been difficult for those 19 Islamic terrorists to arrange, could they have suspended Newton’s laws on 9/11?

THE VANCOUVER HEARINGS ARE DESIGNED TO DEMONSTRATE THAT

• The official account provided by the United States government is false
• The search for truth requires that all possibilities be considered without prejudice
• Theories must be compared on the basis of the relative probability of the evidence if they were true, where those with higher likelihoods thus defined are preferable to those with lower, where, when the evidence has “settled down”, the theory with the highest likelihood is “acceptable” in the tentative and fallible fashion of science

Theories in science consist of sets of laws combined with dictionary definitions, where the laws of the sciences can be used to explain and to predict the phenomena of experience.  Establishing laws entails a process of sorting out the relevant properties from irrelevant via controlled experiments.  Applying them entails deriving what happens when their initial conditions are realized, given the initial conditions that were present at the time.  In this context, think of these theories as causes in relation to the evidence as their effects.  The question thus becomes, “Which of these causes would have the greatest potential to explain the evidence as their effects?”, as an inference to the best explanation.

In case that sounds imposing, it is the same pattern of reasoning that police employ in the course of their investigation of crimes.  Suppose that we have a male corpse with bruises around its neck, but no bullet holes or knife wounds.  What is the probability that he was stabbed (shot or strangled) relative to that evidence?  Because the probability of having no knife wounds if he was stabbed is zero, the likelihood that he was stabbed is also zero. Similarly the probability of having no bullet wounds if he had been shot is zero, so that he was shot likewise has a likelihood of zero.

Given the presence of bruises on the neck, however, there clearly would be a non-zero likelihood that he was strangled.  With the accumulation of more evidence during an autopsy, it might turn out that the bruising was not the cause of death but that he was actually poisoned.  The same pattern of reasoning applies to the events of 9/11. Ask, for example, if the Twin Towers collapsed, what is the probability that they would blow apart in every direction from the top down? Insofar as gravity works in only one direction, down, while explosives blow out in every direction, the likelihood that the towers collapsed is low, while the use of explosives is high.

Knowing that the Twin Towers did not collapse does not explain exactly how it was done, much less by whom and why.  Consideration of the rate of destruction and of various residual effects, including upon other buildings and vehicles in the vicinity, offers clues as to how it was done which, in turn, can provide clues about the who and the why, where this conference will compare conventional explosives with exotic accelerants, including nano-thermite, with mini-nukes and with directed energy devices to determine which can best explain the totality of the evidence.

Similar questions will be asked about the hijackers, the planes, and the passengers. What is the probability, if the hijackers were real, that five or six would show up alive and well? If the flights were real, what is the probability two of them were not scheduled to fly that day and the other two not deregistered until four years later?  If the passengers were real, what is the probability that all of their phone calls were faked?  If these planes actually crashed, what is the probability of no evidence of plane crashes at Shanksville and elsewhere? We will address these questions and more.

Perhaps the most encompassing description of The Vancouver Hearings, therefore, is to expand the boundaries of 9/11 Truth by exploring the most complex and controversial of the issues confronting us, from what did or did not happen at the Pentagon, the possible use of exotic and unfamiliar technologies to destroy the Twin Towers, the exploitation of the mass media to convey false impressions about what happened that day, and up to a consideration of the motives and ideologies that brought 9/11 about to instill fear into the American public and manipulate them for political purposes.

“Face to Phone with Jim Fetzer — Founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth”

“It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you, it’s what you think you know that ain’t so.” — Mark Twain

For those who cannot join us in Vancouver, the conference will also be live-streamed.

from: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/09/28/the-science-and-politics-of-911-the-toronto-hearings/

by Jim Fetzer

In “The Pros and Cons of The Toronto Hearings”, Joshua Blakeney observes that, in spite of its admirable format and procedures, where many of its presentations contributed toward its ostensible goal of promoting the cause of 9/11 Truth, there were at least four areas in which it was at best only a qualified success or even an abject failure, where, by restricting the focus to those areas regarded as least controversial, it did not come to grips with the who and the why of 9/11; what did or did not happen at the Pentagon; and different theories of how the Twin Towers were destroyed. In what appears to have been a lapse by one of the participants, both “let it happen” (LIHOP) and “made it happen” (MIHOP) positions were advanced by two of the most prominent speakers present.

The Focus of the Hearing

But, perhaps most surprisingly, even though the so-called “hard science” group was in charge, during the discussion of how it was done, what should have been the strongest aspect of the conference about nanothermite, was compromised by deliberately ignoring the serious criticisms that have called into question the theory of “explosive nanothermite”. The most serious of these inadequacies and shortcomings can be explained by adopting a policy that placed the politics of 9/11 ahead of the science. But even beyond reliance upon unsound research, the 9/11 movement is not going to capture the imagination of the American people without a compelling narrative about who was responsible, how it was done and why.

Consider, for example, the criteria of selection that were originally posted on the website announcing the Toronto Hearings that delineated the basis for decisions that would be made about what would and would not be presented during the hearings, namely:

Evidence presented at the Hearings will be chosen according to the following criteria: high degree of certainty;  importance; and consensus. High degree of certainty means that the Hearings will concentrate not on speculation but on facts that can firmly be established. Importance means that the Hearings will concentrate on elements of the governmental explanation that are crucial to that explanation. Consensus means that evidence chosen will be that which is least controversial within the movement of dissent that is critical of the official explanation. (my emphasis)

This sounds admirable, until you consider that what is and what is not controversial within the movement tends to depend upon and vary with the evidence that is available to various parties, the alternative hypotheses they consider, and their capacity for reasoning.

These are not only properties that can vary from person to person at the same time but can also vary for the same person from time to time, such as before and after they have acquired new data, where an explanation that satisfies one set of data points may not also satisfy a revised or expanded set of data points.  And those who do not have a firm grasp of the principles of scientific reasoning are not likely to be able to apply them properly to derive the conclusions that are best supported by the evidence.  Much of the controversy over what did or did not happen at the Pentagon, for example, appears to be a consequence of the failure of members of the community to take into account the same data points, which requires ACTUALLY LOOKING AT EVIDENCE, a practice that has not always prevailed within this community.  And when those who are responsible for conducting the hearings deliberately exclude crucial evidence that undermines what they are presenting, it should come as no surprise if what should have been its greatest strength should turn out to be its greatest liability or, as Joshua suggests, its Achilles heel.

In this commentary on the hearings, I shall contend that the LIHOP/MIHOP controversy was of the least moment and has, in effect, already been resolved, where exchanges between Joshua, Peter Dale Scott and David Ray Griffin have ironed them out, where Scott has graciously conceded that remarks of his that appeared to endorse LIHOP, which Griffin had dispatched in the presentation before his, were lapses on his part and require revision to conform to the available relevant evidence.  Would that all members of the 9/11 community were so objective and rational in their response to criticism.  But the suppression of discussion about the Pentagon, where there is no longer any good reason to doubt that a Boeing 757 did not hit the building, and of nanothermite, where there are now very good reasons to doubt it could have played a crucial role in the destruction of the Twin Towers, are another matter entirely.  So far as I can see, ignoring new data about its lack of explosive potential has to have been deliberate as a form of saving face, when the history of this matter suggests that Steve Jones made an early blunder from which the movement has yet to recover.

The Who and the Why

Although the indications of Israeli involvement in 9/11 are abundant and compelling, ranging from the transfer of ownership of the World Trade Center to private hands, the replacement of the firm that had provided security since it had opened for occupancy in 1970 by an Israeli company, Kroll Associates, the airport security at the 9/11 airports by another Israeli firm, ICTS, which was also in charge when the “shoe bomber”, Richard Reid, was allowed to board and which was granted immunity from lawsuits with the passage of the PATRIOT Act (which prevents them from having to produce surveillance videos from 9/11), “the Dancing Israelis”, Urban Moving Systems, the Odigo messaging service (which sent warnings in advance of the attacks), the 200 Israeli “art students”, the list of hijackers provided to the FBI by the Mossad, and more.  This is all common knowledge to serious students and creates the framework for a narrative that explains who and why these atrocities were committed.  Indeed, there are many articles about all this by Alan Sabrosky, Christopher Bollyn, and others, with which members of the organizing committee had to have been familiar.  If the hearings were intended to promote 9/11 Truth, then it appears inexcusable that all this was omitted.

The strongest element of the “official account” of 9/11, which we find in THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT (2004), is the narrative about 19 Islamic fundamentalists, who hijacked four commercial carriers with box cutters, outfoxed the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, and perpetrated these atrocities under the control of a guy off in a cave in Afghanistan. This may be its most compelling dimension, especially when combined with the stories of heroism on those planes, such as Flight 93, the calls to their loved ones, including by Barbara Olson to her husband, Ted, and the crashes that took the lives of 125 at the Pentagon, apart from any passengers aboard any of those planes.  All of this makes for a moving and emotional narrative of what unfolded on 9/11, which is what we would expect from its own Executive Director, Phillip Zelikow, whose area of academic specialization prior to becoming engaged in public service was the creation and maintenance of “public myths” which was surely his prime qualification for that position, where, as Kevin Barrett has also observed, he completed a draft outline of the commission’s report a year before he would share it with other members of the staff and has now been promoted to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, where he can cope with 9/11 criticism, a nice example of putting “the foremost expert” in charge!

The fact that the alleged “terrorists” were not devout Muslims but partook of strip shows, hookers, alcohol and pork, is not among the few reports we learn about their activities, not to mention that none of them was qualified to fly Boeing 757s and 767s, which is not a trivial task.  We even know (from Elias Davidsson) that the government has never proven that any of them were actually aboard any of those planes and learn (from David Ray Griffin) that all of the phone calls from those four aircraft were faked. And we know from Col. George Nelson, USAF (ret.) that, even though there are millions of uniquely identifiable component parts from those four planes, the government has yet to produce even one.  And we learned from an FBI agent that the reason why the NTSB did not investigate any of those crashes (for the first time in its history) is that, “It wasn’t necessary because we saw them on television!” But we actually didn’t see what happened in Shanksville on television.

We didn’t see the Pentagon crash on television.  And what we did see on television about the hit on the North Tower and on the South were laden with anomalies that make them highly suspect as examples of video fakery.  And these are hardly the only indications that the events of 9/11 were fabricated.

The 9/11 Truth movement has to provide a competing narrative as a necessary condition for it to gain traction with the public.  We know the “official account” cannot be sustained on multiple grounds, including that it violates laws of physics, of engineering and of aerodynamics.  This means that accepting what we have been told is just fine as long as you are willing to believe impossible things.  But we also know far more than that the “official account” is false. We have ample justification to conclude that the neo-cons who ran the Department of Defense and were prominent participants in the Project for the New American Century were concerned that, with the demise of the Soviet Union, there was an unprecedented opportunity for the US, as the sole remaining superpower, to seize its chance to create a world-wide empire for the next 100 years, if only the American people could be persuaded to support the wars of aggression that would be entailed by invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq in its initial effort to take control of the Middle East for the sake of oil, Israel, and ideology. They feared that the moment would be lost because American values and traditions oppose attacking nations that have not attacked us–unless there were to be a traumatic, catalyzing event on the order of “a new Pearl Harbor” that would convince the public to support these actions and curtail civil rights in the face of a foreign threat.

What didn’t happen at the Pentagon

There was no “foreign threat”, however, which meant that one had to be invented. This is a scenario we all know, from David Ray Griffin’s first book, THE NEW PEARL HARBOR (2004), to his latest, THE NEW PEARL HARBOR: TEN YEARS LATER (2011), where I myself–and I am by no means unique in this respect–have published about it and made presentations in 2008 (“9/11 and the Neo-Con Agenda”), 2009 (“Is 9/11 research ‘anti-Semitic’?”), 2010 (“Are wars in Iraq and Afghanistan justified by 9/11?”), and 2011 (“False Flag Terror and the Rise of the Global Police State”), where one difference between my presentations and those of many others is that I openly discuss indications of Mossad and Israeli involvement, while most of them do not.  Even Peter Dale Scott and David Ray Griffin, to the best of my knowledge, steer clear of addressing the abundant and compelling evidence that Israel was profoundly involved in 9/11.  The only instance in which the subject was broached during the Toronto Hearings, as I understand it, was when Griffin was asked after his lecture whether five Israelis had been arrested on 9/11.  He replied, “Yes.”  So 9/11 Truth has the world’s stage during this conference and THAT is the only mention of Israel?  What’s wrong with this picture?

But if Peter Dale Scott and David Ray Griffin say too little about Israeli complicity in 9/11, others, such as Alan Sabrosky and Christopher Bollyn, claim too much.  As Webster Griffin Tarpley, 9/11 SYNTHETIC TERROR: MADE IN THE USA (2006, revised edition), has observed, there were as many as 17 anti-terrorism drills taking place on 9/11–a number that he has recently increased to 27!–which disrupted normal channels of communication between the FAA and NORAD.  These drills are not something that 19 Islamic terrorists could have arranged, where either they were incredibly lucky to have chosen the one day that the US Air Force would not be in any position to respond or else there was high level duplicity in making sure that no USAF fighters would intercept any of the allegedly hijacked planes. Even more incredibly, one of them is purported to have traveled at more than 500 mph, barely skimming above the Pentagon lawn and encountering several lampposts en route to its target on the ground floor of the West Wing of the building, where two civilian lime-green firetrucks would arrive in short order and extinguish the very modest fires.  Yet there was no massive pile of aluminum debris from a 100-ton aircraft with a wingspan of 125′ and a tail that stood 44′ above the ground.  No wings, no tail, no bodies, seats, or luggage were found there.  Not even the engines, virtually indestructible, were recovered from the Pentagon.

An even more stunning indication that officials at the highest levels of the Department of Defense had to have been involved than arranging those convenient “anti-terrorism” drills is that we have abundant and compelling proof that no plane hit the building or, to be more precise, that no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon. The best witness at the scene, April Gallop, walked through the hole in the wall on the ground floor and has reported seeing no signs of debris from an airplane having crashed there.  Jamie McIntyre of CNN, among the first reporters to arrive, explained to his anchor that, from his close up inspection, there were no signs that any large plane had hit anywhere near the Pentagon. Flight recorder data provided to Pilots for 9/11 Truth as having come from Flight 77 by the NTSB has turned out to correspond to a plane on a different, due east, trajectory, which was too high to have hit any lampposts and was 100′ above the building one second from impact. CIT realized that a Citgo station was situated between the two trajectories, where on the “official account” it would have flown SOUTH of the station, but on the alternative NORTH, and located more than a dozen witnesses who reported that the plane had approach the building NORTH of the Citgo station.

That a plane was used to create the misleading impression that it had actually hit the Pentagon (by setting off explosives as it passed over it) has also been confirmed by the report of Dave Ball, the trucker buddy of a friend of mine from JFK research, Roy Schaeffer, who told Roy that he had been in front of the Pentagon at the time and watched a large plane fly toward the building and then swerve over it. When we take into account that Flights 11 and 77 were not even scheduled to depart that day (which Gerald Holmgren discovered) and that the planes corresponding to Flights 93 and 175 were not de-registered by the FAA until 28 September 2005 (as its own records revealed), pursuing the planes (like following the money) would appear to offer some of the most fertile ground to promote 9/11 Truth among the public. How can planes that were not even in the air have crashed and how can planes that crashed have still been in the air four years after 9/11?  And the very idea that the government would mislead citizens of the United States about what happened at the Pentagon, which is our nation’s center for national defense, provides proof beyond any reasonable doubt that 9/11 was “an inside job”! It is therefore profoundly disturbing that this line of inquiry was not pursued with the greatest vigor during The Toronto Hearings, which thereby forfeited a major opportunity to reach the public.

On how it was done

Both T. Mark Hightower, with whom I have published articles on nano-thermite, and I had hoped that those who were running the shop at the Toronto Hearings would be responsive to what we had reported to them over and over again.  Even before publishing “Has nanothermite been oversold to the 9/11 Truth community?”, for example, Mark had written to the leading figures in the “hard science” group, including Steve Jones, Kevin Ryan, and Niels Harrit, who were either non-responsive or dismissive of his findings.  Even David Ray Griffin reaffirmed that “we are happy with our formulation” and denied that they–the leaders of the movement–should be held responsible for the belief that nanothermite is a high-explosive, which is stunning considering that he himself has been among those who have perpetuated that belief! In “Is ’9/11 Truth’ based upon a false theory?”, for example, we quote Richard Gage and Griffin’s enthusiastic endorsements of (what we call) “explosive nanothermite” or “the nanothermite myth”, which those who have been offering rebuttals to Joshua in posts about his column, such as WearechangeAtlanta and Camron Wiltshire, whom I believe are one and the same, have either overlooked or are deliberately distorting. Without suggesting that Camron falls into that category, a technique well known to political advisers, advertisers, and disinfo ops is having one of their group publish something another of them can enthusiastically endorse!

Kevin Ryan answering questions in Toronto

We certainly agree that, if the “thermite sniffers” (as Rosalee Grable has humorously referred to them) were to exclude contrary evidence from consideration, the case can be made that nanothermite MIGHT be explosive.  But the facts show otherwise, where its detonation velocity of 895 m/s in conjunction with the acknowledgment that destroying materials by means of shockwaves requires velocities at least equal to the speed of sound in those materials, 3,200 m/s for concrete or 6,100 m/s for steel, demonstrates its impossibility. How much more proof is required to establish the point that the explosive properties of nanothermite have been oversold? Mark issued his “nanothermite challenge” on 1 May 2011, which should have been ample time for a serious response from the “hard science” group.  Instead, on the day “the challenge” expired, 20 June 2011, Kevin Ryan published “The Explosive Nature of Nanothermite”, a shoddy piece of research that not only did not come to grips with the problem but actually implicitly cited an article that affirmed an even lower detonation velocity of 300 m/s for nanothermite!

Ryan, like the Toronto Hearings, appears to be driven more by considerations of public relations than he is with the integrity of their research on nanothermite. The most striking example of rational response to Mark’s findings has been Dwain Deets, the former Chief of Research Engineering and Director for Aeronautical Projects at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, who has even provided a diagram illustrating certain detonation velocities as well as the sonic (speed of sound) velocities in various materials to illustrate the dimensions of the problem, published in “Is ’9/11 Truth’ based upon a false theory?” We are talking about laws of nature–in this case, laws of materials science–which cannot be violated and cannot be changed. The “hard science” group has now made several moves to save face by suggesting that nanothermite can become explosive if it were combined with explosives, which is also true of toothpaste (my example) and of breakfast cereal (Mark’s). So that claim is true but trivial.  The other has been to suggest that classified military technology may exist that makes nanothermite explosive.  But, since there is no available proof that that is the case, the “hard science” group is then trading in speculation of the kind that it has used to pillory those who have advanced alternative theories, such as the use of directed energy weapons, for which, I dare say, there is less doubt about the existence of corresponding weaponry.

If the objective was to concentrate not on speculation but on facts that can firmly be established, therefore, then these hearings were a failure, even with respect to the core issue of explosive nanothermite. The claim that nanothermite can become explosive when it is combined with explosives is true but also trivial, while the claim that nanothermite is explosive is either false or merely speculative. This means that The Toronto Hearings were focused on “evidence” that is either false or trivial or speculative, which is hardly the premium standard with which these hearings were advertised and falls far short of accomplishing the objective of reassuring the public that the 9/11 Truth movement is based upon a firm foundation. If anyone still harbors any lingering doubts about all of this, consider that, even though Mark and I had contacted those who were controlling the hearings some five months or more before they would be held to inform them of the nature of the problem, MARK’S DISCOVERIES WERE NEITHER REPORTED NOR DISCUSSED.

What was really going on?

Science cannot proceed by papering over problems or evading their consideration.  I am therefore perhaps most perplexed that Camron Wiltshire and others are attacking me and Mark rather than FOCUSING ON THE FAILURE OF THE “HARD SCIENCE” GROUP to have done its homework.  This issue is not going to go away and this would have been the perfect time to deal with it.  The pretense that there really is no problem simply cannot be sustained. I am reminded of the children’s story about “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.  How can a 9/11 research group that identifies itself as the “hard science” group leave the movement in such a precarious position?  Perhaps they have a solution to the problem.  But if they have a solution to the problem, it would have been appropriate to present it rather than feign that all is well with respect to 9/11 science, where Harrit’s suggestion that perhaps the distinction between incendiaries and explosives may no longer matter in the age of nanotechnology reveals the depths of denial into which the movement has sunk.

YouTube – Veterans Today -Video fakery in New York

The suppression of discussion of what didn’t happen at the Pentagon may even be outweighed by the lack of willingness of the 9/11 Truth community in general to admit the evidence that substantiates video fakery in New York, which is objective and scientific.  As an illustration, the plane shown in the Hezarkhani and Fairbanks videos passes though its entire length into the building in the same number of frames it passes through its entire length in air.  Ascertaining that this is the case can be replicated by anyone using frame-by-frame advance.  That, of course, would be impossible unless this massive 500,000-ton building provides no more resistance to the trajectory of an aircraft than air.  Science requires testing hypotheses on the basis of observation, measurement, and experiment; but that is exactly what is taking place in this case on the basis of observation, calculation, and comparisons as an experiment, which refutes the hypothesis that the videos are genuine on the presupposition that videos displaying impossible events cannot be authentic.  It may have been done using CGIs, video compositing, or even a holographic projection. In our visually dominated culture, where movies and television are pervasive, I believe the public would be fascinated to learn that it had been deceived on 9/11 by video fakery!

Were I even more cynical than I have become in dealing with the members of the “hard science” group, I would suggest that, by excluding discussion of the who and the why and by omitting evidence with the greatest potential to convince the public at a single stroke that 9/11 WAS “an inside job”–which includes what didn’t happen at the Pentagon but also the use of video fakery in New York–the effect was to present an atrophied version of “9/11 Truth” that will not cause a ripple in the world’s understanding of how all this was done.  The evidence of Israeli complicity is abundant and compelling, yet hardly a word about it was mentioned during these hearings (apart from a single answer to a single question).  The Pentagon was discussed in passing, but the evidence that no Boeing 757 crashed there did not receive the emphasis it deserved.  These are among the elements that could be used to create a compelling narrative about what really happened on 9/11.  The focus on how it was done, where the myth of nanothermite remained “front and center”, alas, represents a betrayal of the standards of science to which the “hard science” group professes its dedication.  In crucial respects, therefore, this conference appears to have been an exercise in politics and public relations, not scientific research or 9/11 Truth.

Jerry Mazza and I recently reflected on The Toronto Hearings during a conversation between us on “The Real Deal”, the radio program I host on M/W/F from 5-7 PM/CT. He resides in New York and has frequently written about 9/11. In 9/11 Truth splits its impact he raises the question of “whose bright idea it was to take some of the best minds of the 9/11 Truth Movement and go to Toronto to conduct International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001. Its linked position paper reads like a statement restating the now obvious findings of the last decade.”  He thought that 9/11 (or a substantial part of it, at least) had happened in New York and deserved the whole of 9/11 Truth’s presence.  But it was not to be.  The ceremonies at “Ground Zero”, astonishingly enough, excluded the survivors of those who died that day and even the first responders!  If a miscarriage of justice of this magnitude can take place in New York, perhaps I should not be surprised that events in Toronto were at least equally disconcerting.  The nation and the world has been subjected to an elaborate hoax, a staged event replete with Hollywood-style special effects, which is not going to be exposed by half-hearted efforts by the 9/11 movement to stage events of its own that, like those of 9/11, were used to achieve political objectives and manipulate the opinion of the public.  I am sorry to say it, but the dead deserved far better.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

from: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/09/20/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-toronto-hearings/

by: Joshua Blakeney 

I spent September 8th to 12th in Toronto, Ontario, Canada attending The International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, an event sponsored primarily by James Gourley’s International Centre for 9/11 Studies, which appears to be a mostly virtual entity based in the United States with a web site at International Center for 9/11 Studies

The International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, also referred to as the “Toronto Hearings”, set the following objectives for the hearings:

(1) To present evidence that the U.S. government’s official investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, as pursued by various government and government-appointed agencies, is seriously flawed and has failed to describe and account for the 9/11 events.

(2) To single out the most weighty evidence of the inadequacy of the U.S. government’s investigation; to organize and classify that evidence; to preserve that evidence; to make that evidence widely known to the public and to governmental, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations.

(3) To submit a record and a summary of the Hearings, together with signed Statutory Declarations by witnesses, to relevant governments, groups and international agencies with the request that a full and impartial investigation be launched into the events of September 11, 2001, which have been used to initiate military invasions and to restrict the rights of citizens.

(4) To engage the attention of the public, the international community and the media through witness testimony as well as through media events broadcasted via the Internet during the four day event.
 

No sincere 9/11 truth-seeker could dispute the spirit of these objectives, which every member of the 9/11 truth movement ought to employ as a rough guideline for future research and activism.
 

I was thus observing the Toronto Hearings as someone who has a decent awareness of what is strong evidence, what is inconclusive evidence and what is irrelevant when it comes to what did and did not happen on 9/11.

To prepare myself for what I anticipated would be a rather technical discussion of nanothermite, I had read three articles by T. Mark Hightower and Professor Jim Fetzer, “Has nanothermite been oversold to the 9/11 Truth Community?”, “Is ’9/11 Truth’ based upon a false theory?“, and “Nanothermite: If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit!”. Professor Fetzer and I discussed the nanothermite subject prior to my going to Toronto and since my return.

While I am grateful for his assistance, the suggestion that he or Kevin Barrett or T. Mike Hightower ought to have been invited to participate was mine, not his, in case there should be any doubt.

I think their presence would have contributed an element that was largely missing from the Hearings, which is the presentation of conflicting arguments on crucial issues, such as those that have arisen over nanothermite, as I explain below.

[Joshua Blakeney explains his run-ins with the National Post’s Jonathan Kay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdLf0KTCcTs ]

 
There were many commendable achievements of the Toronto Hearings.

Firstly, they brought together a wide array of researchers, politicians, physicists, journalist, engineers, architects, teachers, academics and citizens who purport to share an interest in what did and did not transpire on 9/11.

Secondly, the steering committee which included Graeme MacQueen, Laurie Manwell, James Gourley, Adnan Zuberi and Kevin Ryan introduced a quazi-judicial format which should be employed by subsequent 9/11 Hearings and which has helped pave the way for future jurisprudence on the subject of 9/11.

Rather than merely having audience members posit questions to presenters, who were referred to as “witnesses”, the organizers commissioned four distinguished panelists to hear the evidence.

These panelists will submit their evaluations of the testimony for the forthcoming Final Report of the International Hearings on September 11, 2001. The structure of the Toronto Hearings was thus exemplary.

By allowing for cross-examination presenters were compelled to be on their toes, which probably made the testimony they gave appear more legitimate and reliable.

Moreover, the allegation that presenters were totally “preaching to the converted” could not be sustained. One panelist, Judge Imposimato, Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy, heretofore has never been known to actively promote skepticism towards the official story of 9/11.

Whilst I endorse the structure of the Toronto Hearings and whilst I think about 75% of the content did provide a selection of the “most weighty evidence of the inadequacy of the U.S. government’s investigation”, I think perhaps 25% of the content did not meet this standard and was less relevant than evidence which could have been included in the hearings.

The allegation could be sustained that the organizers squandered about ¼ of the Hearings’ time on what might be called inconclusive evidence or abstract theoretical discussions when more “weighty” and relevant evidence exists, which brings us closer towards the truth of 9/11.

Learning from Experience

The fact that especially Graeme MacQueen, Adnan Zuberi and Laurie Manwell are pleasant, well-intentioned individuals who worked extremely hard to organize the Toronto Hearings should not preclude us from offering constructive criticism of

1) their decision to emphasize certain pieces of “evidence” over others;

2) the statements of individual speakers who spoke at the Hearings;

3) the inclusion of certain presenters over others.

Cognizant of the truism that “nice people can make bad judgments”, I will proceed with constructive criticism of the Hearings in this article whilst also stating what I thought were some of the positive elements of the four day event.

 
If poor decisions by the steering committee are not criticized by bona fide 9/11 skeptics, then future 9/11-related hearings might replicate the handful of mistakes, which I elucidate in this article.

I therefore believe that we should learn from the achievements of the Toronto Hearings and reject the mistakes. That seems to be the best way for us to progress as the 9/11 Truth Movement develops its juridical personality.

We all hope for future investigations into the events of 9/11. It is integral that when we finally achieve authentic and objective criminal investigations into 9/11 that we’ve been employing a processes of elimination to eliminate irrelevant evidence from our case against individuals, such as Dick Cheney and Larry Silverstein, who stand accused of complicity in the events of 9/11.

My main argument in this essay is that, while much good was done during the Toronto Hearings, a significant amount of time was squandered on topics that if raised in a court of law would be deemed irrelevant to what did and did not happen on 9/11.

On the Issue of Relevancy 

 
After my comrade Splitting the Sky bravely attempted a citizen’s arrest on George W. Bush on March 17, 2009 in Calgary and was arrested for “obstructing a police officer” (who was protecting a credibly accused war criminal), I was able to participate in the March 2010 trial at the Calgary Courts Centre, which many dubbed “The Trial of Splitting the Sky versus George W. Bush.”

As one of a handful of individuals who sat through all of the proceedings, I noted in particular how the issue of relevancy was repeatedly invoked by both the Crown and judge when it came to whether or not evidence of Bush’s crimes was to be included in the record.

 
If we’re attempting to solve the crime of 9/11, we have to be as specific and relevant as possible with regard to the evidence we adduce. The steering committee, in my view, failed to properly consider relevancy in its inclusion of certain pieces of “evidence” and by their extension of invitations to certain speakers (which in some cases may have involved favouritism trumping reason).

Whilst the steering committee insisted that the Hearings were to be different than conventional academic conferences, many of the presentations were more suited to an academic conference as they were more abstract and theoretical than empirical or evidentiary.

Four Criticisms of the Toronto Hearings

I will argue that the failure to explicitly rule out Let-It-Happen-On-Purpose theory (LIHOP) consistently throughout the proceedings allowed precious time to be wasted with several speakers providing analyses of 9/11 which implied that the U.S. government had allowed bin Laden and al-Qaeda to attack them on 9/11, a theory that had been dispelled by David Ray Griffin on the first day of the proceedings.

I will further attempt to prove that the time dedicated to the discovery of thermetic materials in the dust from the WTC towers was not only highly inconclusive in terms of explaining how the towers were destroyed but that this inconclusiveness was in fact noted by one of the panelists, namely, Professor Richard B. Lee.

[Toronto Hearings’ panelist Professor Richard B. Lee realizes that nano-thermite-as-explosive-theory is being oversold by Kevin Ryan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kJTigupiJc ]

 
I will bring into question the relevance of the discussion of SCADs (State Crimes Against Democracy) absent a prior determination of whether the “war on terrorism” was primarily contrived by agents of the U.S. state or of the Israeli state.

Documents going back to the 1980s, emanating from Tel Aviv rather than Washington, such as the book Terrorism: How the West Can Win (1986) edited by Benjamin Netanyahu, suggest that the “war on terrorism” was an Israeli inspired initiative.

Many scholars such as Walt, Mearshimer, Petras, Sneigoski and others have demonstrated that the lead protagonists for the “war on terrorism” were “Israel firsters” such as Wolfowitz and Feith, both of whom lost their security clearances in the 1980s for passing classified documents for Israel.

Redundant Cold Warriors such as Cheney and Rumsfeld were just “hangers on” to this Israelocentric initiative, such scholars argue.

The psychological and epistemological discussions included in the Hearings, I will argue, whilst academically interesting, otherwise tell us little about what transpired on 9/11.

Such presentations as the one provided by Laurie Manwell lack direct relevance to 9/11 and hinder attempts to “single out the most weighty evidence of the inadequacy of the U.S. government’s [9/11] investigation.”

A Flawed Definition of Evidence

 
While I generally endorse the organizational structure of the Toronto Hearings and, in particular, the attempt to create a court-like structure for the proceedings, one departure from anything resembling jurisprudence was the decision that the admissibility of “evidence” was contingent on certain unconventional criteria which seemed to run contrary to the stated goal of bringing forth the most weighty evidence.

The Toronto Hearings website, it should be noted, has now removed these criteria, perhaps to conceal their odd methodology. But we can assume that the following key paragraph, heretofore available on their website, provides a good indication of how the purported evidence was “sifted”:

“Evidence presented at the Hearings will be chosen according to the following criteria: high degree of certainty; importance; and consensus. High degree of certainty means that the Hearings will concentrate not on speculation but on facts that can firmly be established.”

“Importance means that the Hearings will concentrate on elements of the governmental explanation that are crucial to that explanation. Consensus means that evidence chosen will be that which is least controversial within the movement of dissent that is critical of the official explanation” (my emphases).

LIHOP versus MIHOP

 
On the first day of the Toronto Hearings David Ray Griffin established that there is no evidence that al-Qaeda or Osama bin-Laden did 9/11.

Although the video of Griffin’s testimony from September 8^th is not posted in its entirety on the internet, I explicitly recall someone asking a question of Griffin during the Q&A about bin Laden and him replying that he didn’t feel any need to discuss bin Laden or al-Qaeda as they relate to the events of 9/11, because there is no evidence that they were involved in the events of 9/11.

This, like the vast majority of Griffin’s utterances, is accurate. Griffin’s assertions were supported by the excellent presentation of Jay Kolar on the morning of September 9^th.

Firstly, bin Laden denied involvement in the events of 9/11; most, if not all of the alleged hijackers were not Islamists; it is unclear whether or not al-Qaeda even exists as an autonomous and coherent non-state actor; there is no evidence that the alleged hijackers boarded any of the flights on 9/11; and, as Wayne Madsen has revealed, British intelligence documents suggest that the alleged hijacker cells were run and operated by the Mossad.

In a proper court of law, were it established on the first day of the trial that entity X (in this case al-Qaeda) was not involved in the crimes, any subsequent references to it would be omitted so as not to waste the court’s time. Subsequent 9/11 hearings should employ such a process of elimination.

 
A process of elimination was not displayed during the Hearings; come the afternoon of Day 2 of the Toronto Hearings Professor Michel Chossudovsky, who came through the door at the last minute having arrived from Montreal and who spoke extemporaneously, made repeated references to al-Qaeda, bin Laden, and the complicity of intelligence agencies with Islamists, thereby implying that this was relevant to what transpired on 9/11.

Either al-Qaeda and bin Laden were involved in 9/11 or they weren’t.
It cannot be both. Perhaps Chossudovsky was chosen to speak not because of what he says about 9/11, which reinforces the myth of al-Qaeda involvement in 9/11 leading an investigation into 9/11 on a wild goose chase, but rather because of his credentials.

This may have also been the case with Professor Peter Dale Scott, who spoke of the alleged al-Qaeda hijackers boarding Flight 77, even though the speaker immediately before him, David Ray Griffin, had explained at length that it was simply impossible that “al-Qaeda hijackers” had taken control of Fight 77 on 9/11.
 

Michel Chossudovsky entitled his book “America’s War on Terrorism”. “Israel’s War on Terrorism” would have better encapsulated the historical genesis of the “war on terrorism”

Either al-Qaeda hijackers hijacked Flight 77 or they did not. Either Griffin is right and Scott is wrong or vice versa. The organizers–by failing to critically analyze the prior statements of Chossudovsky and of Scott–both of whom seem to be stuck in an “al-Qaeda were involved in 9/11″ analysis–allowed the Toronto Hearings to hear testimony whose relevance to the events of 9/11 is highly tenuous.

Indeed one cannot help but wonder if these individuals were chosen not because they bring forth evidence about which there is “[a] high degree of certainty; importance; and consensus”, but rather because they are big names whose credentials would make the hearings look credible–even if their testimony would regress the quest for truth and justice by taking the Hearings off course.

In other words, despite all the stated rigid criteria aimed at sorting strong from weak evidence, the organizers possibly committed the fallacy of appealing to the authority of the names of two famous researchers who are perhaps famous and less persecuted because, unlike more rigorous 9/11 researchers (for example, Barrett and Fetzer), they parrot the al-Qaeda myth thus indirectly aiding and abetting those culpable for 9/11.

Appeals to Authority

 
Could it be that Peter Dale Scott’s Road to 9/11 (2007) was published by a major print house because it wasn’t subversive to those in power? After all in his works Scott has mainly emphasized the historic role played by “al-Qaeda” in the imperialism of the United States.

Whilst this history is interesting it tells us little about 9/11, which appears neither to have been done by Islamists nor to have primarily advanced Big Oil’s desired policies.

Rather, it seemingly involved the Mossad-controlled, mostly secular patsies and represented a coup d’état by a Zionist faction of the ruling class in order to implement policies which departed markedly from the traditional U.S. Middle East imperial policy of fostering stability for oil markets through the propping up of Arab strongmen like Saddam Hussein.

And could Michel Chossudovsky be so highly successful because he draws attention away (perhaps for emotional or ideological reasons) from the fact that the whole “war on terrorism” was concocted by Likudnik Zionists to shift U.S. imperial policy in a direction desired by them?

The invitation extended to individuals who wrongly testified that al-Qaeda were involved in 9/11, such as Scott and Chossudovsky, appears to have been at least in part intended by the organizers to promote a favorable public reception of the Toronto Hearings.
 

That very objective was implied toward the end of the Toronto Hearings by steering committee member Laurie Manwell, who explained that they had gone to great length to project the Hearings in a way that would appeal to the mainstream media as a public relations strategy.

Holding up the two mediocre news reports by The Globe and Mail and The National Post on the Hearings, she candidly stated that the steering committee had “deliberately” framed the Hearings to curry favour with those whom many of us regard as 9/11-cover-up artists in the mainstream media.

Unfortunately, this provides insight into the steering committee’s methodology, which departs from recognized means of discerning truth as a court of law would do and places politics before science.

Either the Toronto Hearings were intended to prioritize the most compelling evidence (even if it was politically incorrect) as a court of law would do or the steering committee tried to fashion the Hearings relative to the bigoted, 9/11-cover up artists in the corporate media.
 

The controversial decision of the Toronto Hearings to include the least controversial evidence within the Truth Movement represented an abandonment of the traditional approach to truth-seeking, which should be divorced from political correctness, since “controversial” evidence can be true and non-controversial “evidence” can be false or redundant.

The Deeper Problem

 
It can be argued therefore that of the nineteen or so “testimonies” given over the four day period of the Toronto Hearings at least two, those of Scott and Chossudovsky, were mostly superfluous due to the fact that they endorsed the myth that Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaeda were involved in 9/11, even though, as was established on Day 1 by David Ray Griffin, Day 2 by Jay Kolar and again on Day 4 by Griffin, neither were actually involved.

To have a discussion of the political motives for 9/11 without including a discussion of Israeli geopolitics, whilst perhaps gratifying to the pro-Israel National Post, is highly displeasing to those of us who’ve worked hard to expose the multiple Israeli connections to 9/11.

The vagaries about al-Qaeda in relation to 9/11 offered by Chossudovsky and by Scott could have been replaced by more apposite testimony coming from scholars, such as Professor James Petras, a distinguished sociologist who has demonstrated that the “war on terrorism” has a lot more to do with Israel than Big Oil and who, unlike the Hearings, includes the evidence of Mossad involvement in 9/11, such as “the Dancing Israelis”, in his analysis of 9/11 and of “the war on terrorism”.

Furthermore, whilst the testimony provided by Senator Mike Gravel was politically inspiring, it too had little to do with what did or did not happen on 9/11, which brings into question its relevance in the Hearings, the ostensible goal of which was to refute the official account of 9/11.

 
One can imagine defenders of the official story of 9/11, say for example Dick Cheney’s legal team, hearing this “weighty evidence” and opining “Is that all you’ve got?” when in fact there is a great deal of more compelling evidence, which unfortunately is indeed “controversial” and was thus omitted from the Toronto Hearings.

The best way of course to avoid controversy during International Hearings on The Events of September 11, 2001, is to simply not talk directly about what transpired on 9/11.

This was the case with the presentations of Laurie Manwell and Mike Gravel who gave compelling and insightful presentations but whose testimony seems to have deviated from the stated goal of the steering committee to “single out the most weighty evidence of the inadequacy of the U.S. government’s investigation.”

Manwell’s presentation barely touched on the events of 9/11, instead offering an abstract discussion more suited for an academic conference on the subject of the psychology of beliefs.

Manwell even acknowledged in her presentation that some of the presentations at the Hearings departed from what she called the “direct approach” of presenting direct evidence of a false belief and employed an “indirect approach” by focusing more on the form of false beliefs rather than the content of the them.

Since she suggests that the presentation of evidence can strengthen false beliefs, had her “indirect approach” been rigorously followed during the Hearings, evidence that strongly refutes the official account would have probably been excluded–which would have contradicted the avowed objectives and criteria upon which they were based and would appear to be the most extreme form of putting 9/11 politics ahead of science.
 

Red/Grey Chips: The Vancouver Hearings will leave fewer grey-areas and will include no red herrings.

The Nanothermite Challenge

What was ostensibly the greatest strength of the Toronto Hearings—that they were meant to highlight the relatively recent scientific findings of the Steve Jones/Kevin Ryan/Neils Harrit group, especially in relation to the co-authored Bentham Science Chemical Physics Journal article that has been received with such approval by the 9/11 Truth community—may have been its Achilles heel.

Having studied articles by T. Mark Hightower and Professor Fetzer about the exaggeration by the Steve Jones/Kevin Ryan/Neils Harrit group of the capabilities of nanothermite, including “Has nanothermite been oversold to the 9/11 Truth community?” and “Is ‘9/11 Truth’ based upon a false theory?”, which suggest that nanothermite cannot possibly have been responsible for the explosive destruction of the Twin Towers, I was especially concerned as to how this “nanothermite challenge” would be met.
 

I wish I could report that Ryan and Harrit, who were present, were able to sustain the scientific integrity of a research program initiated by Steven Jones, who was not, but I am afraid the results were decidedly mixed.

Even though Hightower has been explicit about his discovery—based upon an extended search of the literature—that nanothermite lacks the explosive properties that have been widely attributed to it, his findings were neither reported nor discussed during the Toronto Hearings.

 
Since virtually all sides agree that the Twin Towers were destroyed by being exploded from the top down (where explosions exert forces in every direction, while gravity does so only in one), that nanothermite cannot have performed that feat suggests that the 9/11 Truth Movement and the Toronto Hearings have succumbed to a red herring.

This was twigged by one of the distinguished panelists Professor Richard B. Lee who questioned the relevancy of nanothermite to the destruction of the towers during one of Kevin Ryan’s lectures.

I was hoping that these representatives of the “hard science” group would graciously concede that the properties of nanothermite have indeed been “oversold”, which would open investigation as to how the destruction of the Twin Towers was actually done—possibly including unconventional mechanisms such as mini-nukes or the censored directed-energy alternative—but my hopes were not fulfilled when Niels Harrit, in particular, suggested that, in the age of nano-technology, perhaps the distinction between incendiaries and explosives no longer matters!

Such speculation, I am sorry to say, does not provide a solution to the problem and most certainly does not meet “the nanothermite challenge”.

Weighing the Pros and Cons

The avowed objectives of the Toronto Hearings were admirable and the organizational structure of the meeting was highly appropriate.

There can be no doubt that the evidence brought forth in the presentations of Cynthia McKinney, Jay Kolar, Paul Zarembka, Barbara Honegger, Graeme MacQueen and David Ray Griffin met and went beyond the standard of providing the most “weighty” evidence belying the official story of 9/11.

However, the use of criteria of selection that valued absence of controversy over scientific truth was a blunder. Putting primacy of public relations ahead of the science of 9/11 could only move the “hard science” group in the direction of the lowest common denominator.
 

While Laurie Manwell was given ample time to explain, for example, what part of our brain causes us to defer to authority, many important aspects of 9/11 were given only short shrift.

There was a failure to provide an extensive discussion of the absence of any evidence of a Boeing 757 at the Pentagon which was probably its most glaring failure–apart from the clear impression of wanting to paper-over the scientific limitations of appealing to a substance that cannot have been responsible for blowing apart the Twin Towers as though it could have been, which may leave a bitter-sweet taste for those who were there, when they finally put “2” and “2” together. This is a problem that is not going to go away.
 

 
If this had been done the judges would have had a firmer basis to reach conclusions and the “hearings” might have had a stronger claim to its own name. Supplanting truth with banality is a recipe for castrating the 9/11 Truth Movement as a force for good.

Some of the truths we have discovered may have far more potential to capture the imagination of the public than even the most extensive discussions of how an incendiary might possibly be reworked to function as a high explosive. For the life of me, I cannot see how such an approach has any potential for capturing the imagination of the public or leading us towards proper criminal investigations into 9/11.

Illuminating the fact that no plane hit the U.S. military command and control center, or that five Israelis but no Muslims were arrested on 9/11, might do it, but the unproven, speculative nanothermite hypothesis advanced in particular by Harrit during the Hearings along with Manwell’s abstract psychoanalyses would in a court of law be dismissed as lacking direct relevance to the crimes perpetrated on 9/11.

Will the Censorship of the Israeli Connection to 9/11 Continue?

As someone who recently viewed “Munich,” the Stephen Speilberg film about Mossad agents seeking retribution for Black September, I was surprised to see one of the onscreen Mossad agents present at the Toronto Hearings.

There I was shoving bacon and eggs down my throat, demonstrating to all that in a previous incarnation I was indeed an English hooligan, when Pernille Grumme (Niels Harrit’s partner) and French actor Mathieu Kassovitz sat down to ask me several questions relating to 9/11. It turns out that Mathieu has an interest in 9/11 and, at least on the surface (he is an actor you know), seemed very concerned with the cover-up of 9/11.

Mathieu Kassovitz in fact pledged $50,000 for Senator Mike Gravel’s ballot initiative for which we must all be grateful. As a result of his concern for 9/11 Mathieu Kassovitz was allowed to speak at the Hearings and has expressed an interest in making a film about 9/11.

As more and more of us are exposing the Israeli involvement in 9/11 one cannot help wondering if Mathieu for ideological reasons will exclude this evidence, as the Toronto Hearings did, from any forthcoming 9/11 films. The Spielberg movie in which he starred was certainly a pro-“war on terrorism” film, which portrayed Arabs as expendable, murderous terrorists and Kassovitz and his fellow onscreen Mossad agents combating Arab barbarism jus in bello.
 

 
The inconsistency between LIHOP and MIHOP, the failure to confront “the nanothermite challenge”, and ignoring evidence implicating the Mossad in 9/11 were perhaps the most glaring failures of the Hearings.

But I am sure that others were as astonished as I to hear Kevin Ryan, of all people, apologizing for the inadequacies of the work of the NIST scientists on the ground that he did not doubt their “honest work” which was revised and tweaked by their supervisors, who conveyed false impressions.

But he doesn’t explain how he could possibly know this.

It would have been far better if there had been less political correctness and more truth, both in the hearings and in this film, because there can be no doubt that the controversial decision to sideline “controversial evidence” has had the effect of suppressing truths about 9/11 which might unintentionally and lamentably make the forthcoming Final Report of the International Hearings on September 11, 2001 far less persuasive than it otherwise might have been.